Banned Books:Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain



                Huckleberry Finn was once part of a gang with his best friend, Tom Sawyer. They found some treasure and now he’s got six thousand dollars just sitting in the bank until he’s older. He lives with the Widow Douglas right now and all she wants his for him to be civil, go to school and be educated. She also wants to keep him safe. Huck’s father is a drunk and he’s back in town. He wants his son and his son’s money. After Huck’s father takes custody from the Widow Douglas, Huck eventually comes up with an ingenious plan to get away. He fakes his own death and heads down the river where he finds Jim, Ms. Watson’s slave, on a run for freedom. And so the adventures begin.
                Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a story about friendship, trust and loosened morals. Huck isn’t the most reliable narrator. He lies throughout the story and is great at exaggerating points. Jim is a more trustworthy character but is a slave and completely ignorant and uneducated. Jim wants to be free with the hopes of eventually buying his wife and children. Huck wants to help but at the same time struggles with what it means to assist a runaway slave, a very well liked runaway slave who belongs to Ms. Watson. It becomes easier for Huck to take things day by day but in the moments between the lies when you can see that Huck does have morals and does in many ways want to do right, he proved to be an interesting and complex character. His moral dilemmas is what makes this an interesting coming of age story.
                Oh Huck. This has never been my favorite novel. I read this in high school and really struggled with whether or not I wanted to read it again. Was it interesting? Yes, but I struggled with reading a story about a southern boy who made excuses for why he felt the need to do wrong and couldn’t always be good. Even now, I enjoyed the writing but the story was so exaggerated that I started to find it simply anticlimactic. It was one thing after another after another. Again not my favorite but I can appreciate why others have enjoyed it for years.  This novel from the beginning has had its share of battles with censorship. In 1885 it was banned from a library in Massachusetts because of the behavior of Huck and his language. This was the first of many bans to take place over the century. The reason for the bans and challenges changed throughout time. It took on a racial standpoint because of the depiction of Jim and the use of the word “nigger” which is said more than 200 times throughout the novel. There have even been instances where passages were changed to make people more comfortable. I’m obviously not a fan of banning books but I am definitely not a fan of altering books either. If a book makes you uncomfortable you should stop reading it. But you should never try and interfere with the reading experience of the others.


Sova, Dawn B.  Banned Books:Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds Revised Edition                             Facts on File Inc 2006

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